NASCAR: Stewart fined for safety criticism

Tony Stewart has been fined $35,000 for criticizing NASCAR's commitment to safety in response to the question of whether or not the sanctioning body should once again monitor the number of tight lugnuts a car must have when leaving pit road.

As of last season, NASCAR no longer required teams to fasten all five lugnuts during pit stops. It came as a result of a pit road video monitoring system that dramatically reduced the number of over-the-wall officials at the track. With the system in place, NASCAR no longer had the means to monitor or enforce its longstanding lugnut policy, which has not sat well with Stewart.

"I guarantee you that envelope is going to keep getting pushed until somebody gets hurt," Stewart said following a sponsor event in Charlotte on Wednesday. "You will not have heard a rant that's going to be as bad as what's going to come out of my mouth if a driver gets hurt because of a loose wheel that hurts one of them.

"With all the crap we're going through with all the safety stuff, and for them to sit there and sit on their hands on this one ... this is not a game you play with safety and that's exactly the way I feel like NASCAR is treating this. This is not the way to do this."

Stewart's comments were in response to remarks earlier Wednesday by Stewart-Haas Racing crew chief Rodney Childers, who told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that teams are taking advantage of the system and that it could have dire consequences.

"Hopefully it gets a little more under control as we go along here," Childers said. "We don't need drivers getting hurt. We don't need tires in the stands and anything else. So hopefully, it gets a little bit better."

Stewart went on to suggest that NASCAR needed to develop a single-nut wheel hub much like those used in Formula 1 and IndyCar if it wasn't feasible for the league to enforce five lugnuts.

"We shouldn't be playing games with safety to win races," he said. "It should be outperforming the other teams, not jeopardizing drivers' lives by teams putting two lugnuts on to try to get two more spots off pit road."

According to Section 12.8.1 of the NASCAR rulebook, actions that could result in a $10,000-$50,000 fine include disparaging the sport and/or NASCAR's leadership, or verbal abuse of a NASCAR official, media members and fans.

Stewart was not the only driver to bring up the lugnut issue. Greg Biffle called the situation "a ticking time bomb" on SiriusXM's "The Morning Drive" on Thursday morning.

"The left-rear tire is going to fall off of one of these cars and spin out, and the thing is going to go driver’s side into the fence," Biffle said. "And we’re going to hurt someone. For what purpose? There’s no advantage when we all do the same thing. It’s like the fuel or the tires. We all have the same fuel. If we all run on a soft or hard compound tire, it’s the same for everybody. We should be tightening five lugnuts on the race car, period. There are five on there for a reason. We need to tighten all five.”

Chairman Brian France defended NASCAR on Thursday during a meeting with the Associated Press Sports Editors, saying "Nobody has led, done more and achieved more in safety than we have."

"It is a never-ending assignment and we accept that," France continued. "We do take offense that anything we do is somehow leading towards an unsafe environment, so he's wrong on that. And we'll deal with that later. Safety ... that's the most important thing we have to achieve, and we're going to continue to do that."

Stewart announced earlier Thursday that

he is cleared to race this weekend